Andrew Butler

Andrew Pickens Butler (18 November 1796-25 May 1857) was a US Senator from South Carolina (D) from 4 December 1846 to 25 May 1857, succeeding George McDuffie and preceding James Henry Hammond.

Biography
Andrew Pickens Butler was born in Edgefield, South Carolina on 18 November 1796, and he was elected to the State House as a young man, and then to the State Senate in 1824. In 1846, he was appointed to the US Senate as a states' rights Democrat, and he was an ardent advocate of slavery. In 1854, he co-authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act with Stephen A. Douglas, and it provided for westward expansion while also allowing for new states to decide on the right to choose on allowing slavery. In May 1856, an absent Butler was targeted in the "Crime Against Kansas" speech by Senator Charles Sumner, who accused him of taking the ugly harlot "Slavery" as his mistress. Butler's relative, Congressman Preston Brooks, took the speech as an attack on his family's honor, and, as Laurence Keitt held off other congressmen with a pistol, Brooks savagely beat Sumner with a cane. Butler died from dropsy in 1857, while he was still in office.